Rethinking Feedback to Students

This article is based directly on the feedback I received about what article I should write next. It is also based on my contributions to the collaborative article "How do you give effective feedback?". Please give me your thoughts in the comments, and if you think what I'm sharing needs to be read by more people, upvote my contributions in that collaborative article, or repost this to your network.

Why feedback matters

Feedback is the bedrock of learning. When Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman and renowned psychologist Gary Klein looked at the literature about what was vital to become an expert, they found feedback was what made the true difference.

Yet in traditional education, feedback sucks. First, there is not enough, because lectures are 1-way communication. And if the instructor calls on a student, the feedback affects self-esteem more than learning; either reinforcing a student's belief they're smart for a right answer, or embarrassing them for a wrong one.

And what about homework & tests? For all the work teachers & students do on these, the feedback is wasted because students don't have the opportunity to fix their mistakes!

What feedback should include

There is a paradox with feedback: The most important feedback for directly learning something is "negative" feedback, showing a student that a mistake was made. Yet, the most important feedback for esteem is positive feedback, so the student knows they are capable of success. So the best feedback includes both, and often needs to be heavier on the positive, because humans tend to have a negative self-esteem bias.

In both cases, specificity is very critical. Saying "good job" is not as valuable, as saying "you did a great job doing xyz". And just telling them they are wrong, without an explanation won't help. And in the case of a student making a mistake, the feedback must include the optimism of future success.

When and how to give feedback

The most effective feedback doesn't come from the teacher, it comes from the situation being eduneered to give feedback. To see what I mean by this, look at video games. They are constantly giving "negative" feedback, such as the character dieing, yet this doesn't deter the player. In fact, the opposite occurs. A big part of this is because the feedback isn't perceived as social.

Another example is when I was learning physics, I was required to do an experiment, that unbeknownst to the students, was one that the teacher knew we would likely bias our data. So in the end, the teacher's feedback to our class about our biases in thinking, was more impactful, because it mostly came from the experiment, and the teacher only had to point it out.

How to balance feedback

When using feedback that is not perceived to be from the teacher, the balance is less about not hurting esteem and more about balancing frustration vs boredom. Think of any games you play on your phone, computer, or console. If you don't have the real possibility of losing, you will get bored. But, if you also don't have the real possibility of winning, you will get too frustrated and give up. It is the "sweet spot" in between that keeps you playing, and learning the skills of that game.

Just imagine if we had education that addicting, but learning real skills instead of specific ones for that only apply to an imaginary game! It is possible, but we need to #ReThink how we do things!

How to receive feedback

As educators, we must be be the change we want to see. Because the implicit is vastly more powerful than the explicit. (Thank mirror neurons for this!)

Students will continue to feel hurt by "negative" feedback, if we are hurt by "negative" feedback. Students won't seek feedback if we don't seek feedback. So go out of your way to get feedback from students. But do so intentionally; seek the feedback that will truly help you be the best educator possible, for your own continual improvement. Then demonstrate how you improve from that feedback, and make sure they know this was based on their feedback.

Then be amazed about how they will grow so much more from the feedback you give them!

Here’s what else to consider

Think beyond yourself and your classroom, to how students can get the type of feedback they will receive when they leave school. This can be done by having employers give feedback to projects. Or, have students contribute to Wikipedia, and have them do so with the Talk section, so they can get feedback from other editors. Or have higher level students who learned the subject tutor students currently learning. Each of these have a different type of value from the feedback, but all can make a huge difference!

Conclusion

Receiving and using timely feedback is the only way to expertise. But it is often best when it isn't perceived as being from a person (i.e. the instructor), but seems like it is just natural, even if that was by design. Learn from how video games do this, and you will see how you can better design the learning system that is your classroom.

And when the feedback is from you personally, don't waste it. Why take all the time to grade papers, if students don't use what you wrote???